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Chionoplema Gen.
n.
Type species: smarti Holloway.
The wings are usually white or grey, marked and fasciated irregularly
with ochreous yellow, brown and black. The hindwings are typically two-tailed
and with an angled postmedial, often obscure. The male antennae are uniserrate,
lamellate. The forewing venation is unusual, with R1-4 arising relatively
basally from the cell and converging with Sc such that branching is obscure. R5
and M1 form a bifurcate system from the anterior angle of the cell as usual. The
hindwing has M2 present, and there is only one anal vein.
The male genitalia are definitive, with some striking modifications. The
uncus is broad, tongue-like, apically convolute, bearing tufts of short and
long, fine, hair-like setae. The valves are small, narrow, upcurved, tapering to
an acute apex, and with a small hair pencil at the base of the sacculus. Between
the valve bases the juxta and anellus form a bridge-like structure that gives
rise dorsally to short and long setose processes on each side and a sclerotised
digitate process centrally. The tegumen is usually prominently shouldered. The
vinculum is broad, the saccus very short. The aedeagus is relatively long.
In the female genitalia (smarti) the ductus is elongate, the
bursa pyriform, set asymmetrically on the ductus. There is a small signum
consisting of two lobes with spines directed laterally in the bursa, away from a
central constriction.
Apart from the species discussed below, the genus also contains C.
inquinata Warren comb. n. (New Guinea, Seram), though this has straighter
valves, a somewhat different anellar structure and a long, slender saccus in the
male genitalia.
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